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Jesus Christ. What the hell had happened to my life in the last half hour? It felt like I’d woken up in the Twilight Zone or something, where absolutelynothingmade a damn bit of sense.
“You keep saying that. Are you expecting me to just take your word for it?”
She gave me a look like I was the dumbest person in the room. “You want to run tests to be sure, go for it. But take one look at that boy and try telling me he’s not yours.”
I couldn’t. Especially because of those eyes.
I scrubbed at my face one last time before standing up and moving toward the kitchen. After getting sick, I’d at least had the wherewithal to put on a pair of sweats and a wrinkled tee I’d grabbed from my bedroom floor.
“Coffee?” I offered over my shoulder as I went to pour myself a cup. Ahugefucking cup since it was becoming clearer by the second going back to sleep was completely out of the question.
“I’m good.”
I stopped to look at the boy, his tiny features so familiar they made my skin break out with goosebumps. I jerked my chin in his direction. He just kept playing with that police car like he didn’t have a care in the world. “What about him?”
“What about him?” Deanne asked as she pulled out her phone and began tapping and swiping, whatever was on the screen more important in her mind.
“I mean, does he need anything? Maybe juice or something?”
“Yeah, if you have it. And actually, he hasn’t had breakfast yet, so if you’ve got something in there you could make him to eat, that’d be great.”
My back went straight, bewilderment washing through me as I slowly turned all the way around to look back at her. “You brought him here without feeding him?”
She actually had the nerve to look affronted. “We were in kind of a hurry, thank you very much.”
Christ, the longer she sat in my living room the more disgusted I was with myself for actually fucking this careless, self-centered woman.
“In a hurry to ambush me,” I hissed, shaking my head in disgust.
As a single man with limited cooking skills, my pantry was sorely lacking, but I managed to make the boy a basic meal of toast and a couple strips of microwavable bacon before taking my coffee back into the living room and resuming my seat.
“So why now?” I asked, getting down to brass tacks.
“Some things have... changed, on my end,” she said cryptically.
I arched a brow, ignoring the way it sent a bolt of pain through my skull. This hangover was going to be a bitch to get through. “How about you expand a little more on that.”
She did, and things only got worse from there. “I’ve been staying with my folks since I had Cash. Everything was fine, but they recently informed me they wouldn’t be helping out anymore.”
“Helping out?”
She shrugged carelessly. “Yeah, babysitting and stuff while I went out with my friends.”
For fuck’s sake.
“So, since they decided to put their foot down, I figured it was time for you to play the parent for a while.”
“Are you joking?” I didn’t have a paternal bone in my entire body, but even I was human enough to realize her reasoning for basically dropping her son off on my doorstep was seriously fucked. “So you’d rather go out and party than take care of your own kid.That’swhy you’re here right now?”
She rose to her feet, hooking the strap of her purse on her shoulder. “Hey, don’t judge me. I’ve had him for two years. Now it’s your turn.”
With that, she shifted on her heel and moved for the door.
“Hey. Hey!” I shot up and started after her, panic clenching my chest in a vise grip. “Where the hell do you think you’re going? You can’t just leave him here!”
“His stuff’s in that bag, but you may need to buy him more clothes and things like that.” She pointed at the medium-sized duffle she’d dropped in the entryway earlier. It couldn’t have held more than a week’s worth of shit, let alone all of his belongings. “The number for his doctor’s office is in there too.”
“What the fuck? When are you coming back?”
